Israel capitulates to Palestinian escalation

The Netanyahu government has caved in to combined Palestinian and Israeli Arab pressure on its positions regarding Temple Mount and its responses to acts of terror. By Thursday morning, July 27, all the security measures, metal detectors, cameras and fences, had been removed from Temple Mount, and the bodies of the three Israeli Arabs who murdered to Israeli police officers handed over to their families in their home town of Umm al Fahm in the Israeli Arab Triangle.

In the Old City of Jerusalem, joyous Palestinians handed out candy and fired off crackers. Their cars hooted to celebrate their victory over the Jews.
In Umm Al Fahm, thousands attended a funeral march early Thursday under fluttering Palestinian flags and hailed the three terrorists, who set off the Temple Mount crisis by gunning down police guards, as “holy martyrs” who brought glory to “occupied Umm al Fahm.” This Arab town northeast of Tel Aviv is represented in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

Even after Israel gave in to their demands, for the sake of calming the loaded crisis, the Palestinians’ clerical leaders and the Waqf did not order Muslim worshippers to end their boycott of A Aqsa. Instead, their prayer gatherings in the streets outside are constantly swelling as a symbol of their confrontation with Israel. The Palestinian Authority, the Tanzim militia and Hamas have called for an escalated showdown with Israel on Friday.
As debkafile noted Wednesday, the Israeli government, by surrendering to Palestinian and Israeli Arab nationalist and religious extremists, has set its feet on a dangerously slippery slope. The insatiable demands for more capitulation will not stop at this point.
debkafile reported Wednesday:
Binyamin Netanyahu’s government is being forced back step by step on the Temple Mount standoff by a three-line siege imposed by the Palestinians, Sunni Arab governments, including Jordan, and public opinion at home.
The security cabinet can’t be faulted for approving its first rational steps for securing the worshippers and visitors frequenting Temple Mount, after three Israeli Arab gunmen desecrated the shrine on July 14 by shooting dead two Israeli police officers on guard at Lion’s Gate.

Metal detectors at the gates provided a quick fix for reopening the shrines the next day.

Where the ministers went wrong was in failing to go after the perpetrators of the murders committed at one of the most sensitive world shrines. The killers belonged to the lawless Jabarin clan that rules the Israeli Arab town of Umm al Fahm. The ministers did not treat this clan as central to the crime, out of concern for the delicate relations with Israel’s Arab minority. Instead, Temple Mount, the lightening rod of Israel’s relations with the entire Muslim and Arab world, was treated as the core issue.
The Jabarins felt safe enough to carry on breaking Israel’s laws. On Tuesday, July 25, a member was caught smuggling a truckload of illegal Palestinian workers from the Palestinian town of Jenin across into Israel. It was obvious that something is badly amiss in national homeland security policies.

In another example, the government finally, a year late, ordered the home of one of the Tel Aviv Sarona Market terrorists, who murdered four Israelis, to be knocked down. One story of a building in the Hebron village of Yata will be destroyed. At the same time, the Supreme Court of Justice in Jerusalem gave the police 30 hours to hand over the bodies of the three Temple Mount gunmen, members of the Jabarin tribe,  to their families for burial.
Razing the home of one of the Tel Aviv terrorists, who claimed to have been inspired by ISIS, in a timely fashion, a year ago, might have been some deterrent for the killers of Umm al-Fahm.
it now turns out that the shrine murders 12 days ago were the result of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians coming together for a joint terrorist conspiracy against Israel. The location was deliberately chosen as the catalyst for dragging moderate Arab rulers into a plot for compelling Israel to give up its sovereignty on Temple Mount and the Old City of Jerusalem. 

This conspiracy was insufficiently addressed by the ministers taking part in the security cabinet’s deliberations. The removal of the metal scanners, security cameras – or any other measures Israel was been forced to cede – will not satisfy the Palestinians and Israeli Arab leaders, including their members of parliament. They are intent on drawing their community of 1.5 million into the bloody brew they have cooked up for the entire Arab world to consume.

As this juncture, the Israeli government has no choice but to brake hard on concessions – even as street violence escalates – and draw a red line against caving in any further. The Palestinians and their clerics should be firmly informed that if they choose to continue to boycott Al Aqsa and hold prayers in the street outside the shrine, so be it. Israel will not budge any further on its responsibility to secure Temple Mount against more violence. And their dream of a victory parade on the holy compound to celebrate their humiliation of the Jewish State will never come true.

Very few Israelis are aware of the origins of the 180,000 Arabs living in Jerusalem today. Most of them originate in Hebron and migrated to Jerusalem over the years since 1967. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan which ruled eastern Jerusalem and its shrines for 19 years up until the Six Day War, very carefully kept Hebron natives out of the city. Their extremist conduct over Temple Mount explains why.
If Israel fails to draw a strong red line at this point in the standoff, a new crisis or terrorist outrage will be staged every few days to force the ministers to fall back step by step on measures pivotal to national security. Popular opnion at home, incensed over the Halamish terrorist outrage, was against the first concession and will oppose any more.

 

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